


Tears

by 105NorthTower



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Highly Sensitive People, Inner Dialogue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-28 05:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30134592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/105NorthTower/pseuds/105NorthTower
Summary: Why does Robin cry?Contains references to high sensitivity, which is a real condition. I have no expertise or special knowledge of it*, and am using the idea to spark off a piece of writing about an emotional journey. Avoid this if that is likely to be difficult for you to read for any reason.* Although I do cry at the drop of a hat.These will be short, drabbly pieces. Except for the ones that are longer. Heck, I don't know, I'm experimenting. Please tell me if it's working.
Relationships: Linda Ellacott & Robin Ellacott, Matthew Cunliffe/Robin Ellacott, Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 16
Kudos: 24





	1. An Accident of Biology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [@bettys_blend](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=%40bettys_blend).



> I'll cry me a river  
> That leads to your ocean
> 
> Emotion / Destiny's Child

It was an accident of biology, nothing more. It didn't mean anything.

Well, sometimes it did, obviously. When she stubbed her toe, or lost a grandparent, or quarrelled with a friend. But mostly, when teenage Robin Ellacott cried, it meant very little.

She cried at weddings, even the weddings of people she didn't much like. She cried at pictures of kittens. She cried at the end of films, both sad and happy ones.

Sometimes, she sat in her room with LaTavie, Kelly, Beyoncé and LeToya looking on, and just cried for the sake of crying.

When emotions were high or when they were not, she cried. A Highly Sensitive Person, they called her. Since puberty, she had tried to follow a routine of sleep, diet and exercise, designed to minimise the effects, and at times it was very effective.

The point was, the number of tears she shed was a very poor indication of her state of mind.


	2. Adding Lustre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin's last day.

It was Robin's last day working for Cormoran Strike and she was determined to acquit herself with complete professionalism.

Matt was right. They'd discussed it the night before while Robin welled up over the potato peelings. If her boss wanted her to stay on, he'd had plenty of time to ask. 

She knew, because Cormoran had told her, that the Bristow family intended to honour John Bristow's debt; even as he was languishing in prison, even though she and Cormoran had put him there, even as the sting of newspaper prurience and the disgrace to the family honour rankled, they would pay. 

They would pay for the truth, and the Cormoran Strike Agency had finally given them that.

// 'Lind? Linda?'

'How's she doing?'

'She's fine, just dropped off.'

'What was it all about, Mike?' //

It had been good, working with Cormoran. He didn't want her to be there at first, she knew that, but it had taken very little effort to make herself indispensable to him. In spite of his obvious talent in his field, he was missing something. A gloss, sometimes, to present the Agency in the best light to the outside world. A foil, perhaps, to bounce ideas off. A mirror, certainly, to show him how he appeared to others. She knew she'd been all these things during her short stay.

She couldn't be indispensable though, not really. He clearly intended, if not to dispense with her exactly, at least to fail to avoid her leaving. Dealing with his creditors this last month, she knew he was adept at coping with situations by simply carrying on, doing what could be done and not being paralysed by what could not be done. He couldn't pay his bills, so he hadn't paid them; he could work his only case, so he'd worked it.

He would, she thought, cope with the downsides to her leaving by just allowing the end to loom into view, happen without intervention, and recede into the past. He wouldn't react, because reacting might change the inevitable course of things and this he had no power to do. He could pay his bills, so he'd pay them; he couldn't offer her a decent salary, so he wouldn't offer it and he wouldn't ask her to stay without it.

While Matt slept, she'd risen early, and sat at their tiny kitchen table, and cried. There was a theory that there was only so much crying a person could do. Robin had never found the end of her river of tears, but it was certainly true that a good cry early made it less likely that she'd be utterly overwhelmed later. Now, she sat at her chair in the office, answering call after call, and the very act of being useful helped her cope with the knowledge that her usefulness here was coming to an end, far, far before she was ready for that to happen.

// 'She said the buttercups were pretty.'

'Right. And that's sad, how?'

'She likes doing that thing where she holds them under your chin.'

'Yes, I know.' //

When Strike arrived, he updated her on his meeting with Jonah Agyeman, which drew a nice line under the investigation, and then shambled into his inner office. Robin wondered if he was about to give her the afternoon off.

'Here,' he said, coming back in. 'This is for you. I couldn't have done it without you.'

Robin managed an _oh_ and then they came, hot and wet and unstoppable. _Bugger. Bugger. Bugger._

She could see Strike's alarm immediately and she didn't blame him. He'd been knifed, his leg was in agony and his picture was all over the papers. He had enough to cope with, he didn't need a secretary who cried at the drop of a hat.

Just as she was wondering how to explain, the badly wrapped package gaped open and revealed a slithering shock of poison green. It did not seem real, but Strike had bought her the dress she'd modelled for him in Vashti. If he'd spent that money on a dress ... it was much more than a month's wages, more than two month's even. What was he thinking? Did that mean ... what did it mean?

The conflagration of so much cash capped the wellspring. She blotted her face with her sleeves and realised this was the moment. She would never have the courage again, not after crying in front of him. The rest of the day was going to be awkward; the cost of the dress would hang in the air between them, her tears which, barely knowing her, he could not understand or assign a proper weight, the approaching goodbyes which had already achieved a watershed status in her mind.

(Would they hug, she wondered? Cormoran didn't seem like much of a hugger. A handshake, most likely and that was good, much less likely to provoke more floods.) 

If she didn't say her piece now, she never would. And if she never said it, she'd regret it forever. She would be cool and business-like, and not at all like a person losing their last chance at a dream. She was not going to cry any more. He didn't know about her dream. No-one did, not even Matthew.

'I don't want to go.'

'I can't afford you, Robin.'

Robin reached for a tissue from the box on the desk. She could do this.

'I'd stay for ...'

// 'And she wants to take some to school on her first day.'

'Oh. What did you say?'

'I told her they'd have buttercups at school too. But she could take some just in case.' 

'Right. And that was all?'

'No. She told me, she wants to be a detective. So she needs to learn stuff.'

'A detective? Whatever next.' //


	3. Solitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just making it.

The train was unusually quiet. Robin threaded her way to her reserved seat and, finding the one opposite occupied, kept going until she reached a carriage with only two other travellers. She chose a seat as far from them as she could, stowed her bag on the seat next to her, took out her book and phone and placed them on the table.

She had no objection to company in general, and quite liked a full, lively, tipsy train with lots of banter, where the overcrowding produced both camaraderie and safety in numbers. She mused on the contrast between intercity trains and the tube. The former, where conversation was allowed and at some times of day not unusual, the latter, where something of the magnitude of a hostage situation would have to occur to break the ice.

On a nearly empty train she'd rather opt for solitude and not take the risk of sitting by a single person who might be not to her taste. Besides, she had had company since dawn, having driven Strike to Devon to interview Daniel Chard, and she would be solicitous of everyone but herself tomorrow, at the funeral. In between, she was due some precious time inside her own head.

//'Have you found her?'

'No mum.'

'Well, she can't have gone far. Keep looking.' //

It had been a momentous week. Matt's mother was gone. Owen Quine's body was found. She had confronted Strike about her position in the Agency. She had made her train's departure by a few seconds.

Perhaps it was wrong to place the last two together with the first, with deaths natural and unnatural, but, as the train pulled through snow flurries so thick she couldn't see where they were, the inside of the carriage seemed to invite her to order events as they mattered to her, not Matthew, or her family, or the world. In this rare cocoon of slow time and empty space, she could set her own agenda.

_I did take you on thinking I could train you._

_You've got a lot of aptitude for the job._

_Nobody was ever more grateful than me for a temping agency's mistake._

_If you're my partner in training ..._

She'd fought back tears in Burger King, but now she let them come. Her head tilted back slightly, they pooled in her eye sockets, before overbrimming and flooding into her hair. 

//'It's been an hour.'

'She's always doing this, Mom '

'I know, lovey, but I can't risk it. We'll have to call them. '//

Strike would keep his word, she knew. He wouldn't make such an offer and then not follow through. The Agency was short of manpower but no longer short of potential clients. The way forward depended on Strike, but was also partly in her hands.

Robin picked up her phone, texted Strike to confirm she was on the train and thanked him again. Then, realising she didn't want to speak to anyone, she put it down again. Her book looked similarly unappealing, so she gazed at the snow storm, at the patterns that almost appeared before vanishing, at the huge flakes flying in the air, meeting the turbulence caused by the train's speeding bulk, and tumbling helplessly away. 

Yesterday, she might have had some empathy for the snowflakes. She imagined their hopeless whirling dance might have called tears to the brink, before she forced them down and chided herself for feeling everything too much. Today, they were frozen ice, they were beautiful and she felt nothing for them.

She was so close, so close to what she wanted above all else. In this week of departures, she had somehow, amazingly, arrived.

//'Robin.'

'Hi, Mommy.'

'Where have you been?'

'I went to see Angus. He was on his own and ponies don't like that.'

'OK. Do you think you could tell me, next time you go?'

'You can't come!'

'No, love, I know. I just like to know where you are.'

'Why is there a police car here, Mommy?'

'Oh ... they just stopped to say, hello.'//


End file.
